Ukrainian troops successfully pressed their swift counter-offensive in the northeastern part of the country on Sunday, even as a nuclear power plant in the Russian-occupied south was completely shut down in an attempt to prevent a radiation disaster from close combat
Kyiv’s move to retake Russian-held areas in the Kharkiv region forced Moscow to withdraw its troops to avoid being encircled, leaving behind a significant number of weapons and ammunition in a hasty retreat as the war began Sunday his 200th day.
A jubilant Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, taunted the Russians in a video address on Saturday night, saying “these days the Russian army is showing what it can do best: showing its back.”
He posted a video of Ukrainian soldiers raising the national flag over Chkalovske, another town retaken in the counteroffensive.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military chief, General Valerii Zaluzhnyy, said his forces had retaken about 3,000 square kilometers since the counteroffensive began in early September. He said Ukrainian troops are only 50 kilometers from the border with Russia.
Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said Ukrainian troops have regained control of more than 40 settlements in the region, noting that he could not give a precise figure because the operation was still ongoing.
Defense Minister Anna Malyar said Ukrainian forces are firing shells containing propaganda into areas where they want to advance.
“One of the ways of informational work with the enemy in areas where there is no Internet is to launch propaganda shells,” he wrote on Facebook. “Before advancing, our defenders salute the Russian invaders and give them one last chance to surrender. Otherwise, only death awaits them on Ukrainian soil.”
The Ukrainian General Staff said Russian forces had also abandoned several settlements in the Kherson region as Ukrainian forces pressed for a counteroffensive. It did not identify the towns.
An official from the Kherson city administration, Kirill Stremousov, said on social media that the city was safe and asked everyone to remain calm.
Ukrainian troops walk past an old position of Russian soldiers, captured during a counter-offensive operation on Sunday, in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine. (Press service of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine/Reuters)
The Russian withdrawal marked the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, near the start of the war. The Kharkiv campaign came as a surprise to Moscow, which had moved many of its troops from the region to the south in anticipation of a counteroffensive there.
In an awkward attempt to save face, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that the withdrawal of troops from Izyum and other areas was aimed at strengthening Moscow’s forces in the neighboring Donetsk region to the south. The explanation sounded similar to how Russia justified its withdrawal from Kyiv earlier this year.
Igor Strelkov, who led Russian-backed forces when the separatist conflict erupted in Donbass in 2014, scoffed at the Russian Defense Ministry’s explanation for the withdrawal, suggesting that handing over Russia’s own territory near the border it was a “contribution to a Ukrainian settlement”.
A residential building destroyed by a strike is seen in Ukraine’s central Mykolaiv region on Sunday. (Umit Bektas/Reuters)
Despite Ukraine’s gains, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the head of NATO warned on Friday that the war would likely drag on for months, and called on the West to continue supporting Ukraine during the that could be a difficult winter.
Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Ukraine’s progress very encouraging.
“I am proud that the United States and our allies have locked arms to support the Ukrainian people in this struggle,” Kaine said in a statement to The Associated Press. “We and our allies must continue with Ukraine. Putin must recognize that the only way out is to end his failed war.”
The nuclear power plant is still in danger
While most of the attention was on the counteroffensive, Ukraine’s nuclear power operator said the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, had been reconnected to the country’s power grid Ukraine, allowing engineers to shut down its last operating reactor to safeguard the plant amid the fighting.
The plant, one of the 10 largest nuclear power plants in the world, has been occupied by Russian forces since the first days of the war. Ukraine and Russia have traded blame for the bombings around them.
Since a Sept. 5 fire caused by a bombing knocked the plant off its transmission lines, the reactor had been powering crucial safety equipment in so-called “island mode,” an unreliable regime that left the plant increasingly vulnerable to a possible nuclear accident.
LOOK | The United Nations calls for a safety zone at the nuclear power plant:
The UN calls for a safe zone around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant
The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency has urged Russia and Ukraine to establish a “nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the Zaporizhzhia power plant.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog that has two experts at the plant, welcomed the restoration of external power. But the agency’s director general, Rafael Grossi, said he remains “gravely concerned about the situation at the plant, which remains in danger as long as the shelling continues.”
He said talks have begun to establish a security zone around the plant.
In a call Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the withdrawal of Russian troops and weaponry from the plant in line with IAEA recommendations.